


Recalibration

by illwynd



Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blood, Creepy, Dark!Thor, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-03-31
Packaged: 2017-12-07 01:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/742826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illwynd/pseuds/illwynd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Upon their return home after the incident on Midgard, Thor asks to be allowed to serve as Loki's jailer so that he can try to bring his beloved brother back to sanity. Within only a few months, though, he must return to Odin and tell him that he failed and Loki has escaped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recalibration

Within the throne room of Asgard, two wolves sat at the high god’s feet, whining and panting, their grey-furred muzzles resting on their folded paws. Two ravens perched with ruffled feathers and beaks like great curved blades, gold on black, and their liquid eyes captured each silent reply to the high god’s decrees. And the Odinson, the thunder god, came before the gleaming dais with his hands clenched at his sides and his eyes kept carefully low. Mjolnir hung heavy from his belt as he went down on a knee, dreading what he had come to tell.

Odin leaned forward where he sat with an attention that seemed only to increase his son’s discomfort. 

“He’s escaped,” Thor said, trying not to mumble.

Behind him, a murmur passed through the shadowy crowd. 

It had been only a few months since Thor had brought his brother back from Midgard and the memory was still fresh, how he had argued so fiercely against the hard justice Odin would have called down. Before that judgment could be spoken Thor had said his piece, demanding to be allowed to hold Loki caged in his own care. If there must be a punishment, he had said before this same dais, he would be the one to dole it out, for Loki was his brother. His kin. His responsibility, a responsibility whose weight he would bear, even if everyone thought him a fool for it. 

Yet now he had no choice but to return and admit that somehow Loki had managed to evade him and flee, despite the seiðkonur’s work that had made it so that only Thor could enter or leave the chamber adjoining his own and that shielded its spaces from any other spell or power just in case Loki managed to regain his bound magics. 

The Allfather eyed him. Awkwardly and with some difficulty, biting at the inside of his lip so as to keep himself from any further words that would only make things worse, Thor made himself meet his father’s piercing gaze. 

When Odin had agreed to let him hold the end of Loki’s chains, it had been only after many discussions—arguments, really—that ended with a warning that his brother was sly and dangerous even without his sorcery, and with a prediction that Thor would not be able to keep his grasp and that in the end Loki would slip away and it would all be for nothing.

 _And now he has_ , Odin did not say before that audience, though the sentiment was in his look and in the resigned set of his grey jaw, _and if there is still vengeance in his mind—as there surely is—we will all likely pay the price for your endless softheartedness toward your brother, who gave up the right to that privilege when he renounced us all._

Thor only stared down at his feet and murmured that of course he would begin the search immediately, as was his responsibility. His eyes did not leave the ground, cheeks seeming ruddy with shame from the shadows of the room. His shoulders were bent under the blood red of his cape, and tensed with readiness and with regret. His fists tightened at his sides, the knuckles white, nails digging into his palms. 

It was clear to anyone watching that Thor had not thought it would ever come to this. Everyone knew that despite all that had happened in recent years Thor could not accept that his brother, whom he had always held dear, had become a mad, vicious thing with nothing but rage in his heart. He had thought his brother could truly be brought back to them all, and it was a sore blow to have to admit that he had been wrong.

Odin sighed then and lifted a hand, giving his son leave to go. 

*

He and a handful of others began the search, riding out from the city as soon as a few hardy supplies could be gathered. Heimdall’s sight could avail them nothing, for Loki had always known how to hide from it, but his magic had been bound and the only possibility was that he was still within the realm. (At least for now. Eventually he would find some other way, for he was endlessly clever and cunningly resourceful. The very fact of his escape proved that, had anyone doubted.)

In small groups they rode, heading out from the heart of Asgard like the spokes of a wheel, searching the hollows and dells, eyes sharp for any sign that might indicate Loki’s passage. 

There was no way of knowing how it was with the other groups, but those who rode with Thor—friends who had hardly seen him for more than a few minutes since he began the task of attempting to restore his captive brother—stayed silent, by his example. He watched the passing landscapes without a word, almost as if he did not see them. His expression was stoic, or perhaps preoccupied. And if that was strange for the prince of Asgard, for the thunder god who once seemed made of smiles and buoyant energy and an endless willingness to battle for the things he wanted, then his companions attributed the change to the final truth of his brother’s disappearance.

At one point, though, oddly, he turned to them and asked, “Do you think he might ever be as he was? Do you believe he can be…”

Fandral gave an uneasy laugh. “One must suppose there is always a chance. Though we will have to find him first.”

No one else said anything, riding onward without song or chatter, their silence grim and weary.

Thor, deep in thought, fell a little behind, and he sometimes glanced up at his companions before him with a dull look in his eye. It was—and he did not like this idea at all—as if they meant only to fulfill a tiresome duty. As if they would be relieved to return empty-handed. As if he was the only one who would care if Loki were gone forever.

Or perhaps they merely sensed the futility of their errand. Thor liked that thought even less, and after a heavy breath he dug his heels into his horse’s sides and surged ahead, forcing himself into the lead, into some semblance of the force he would once have put into the search. 

*

It was Loki, not Thor, who was known as a liar. It was Loki, not Thor, who was known for keeping secrets. Yet there were several things that Thor had never admitted to anyone, and one of them was the real reason he had fought to take his brother’s imprisonment upon himself.

Everyone thought he meant to protect Loki, out of brotherly feeling. But he had promised the mortals that Loki would be dealt with by Asgardian justice, and he had meant to follow through with that. He _would_ protect him—he would argue on his side, carry no grievance of his own even as his wounds healed—but there was no avoiding Odin’s judgment.

That was what he had though, at least, until the last hours before they returned to their own realm. In those final moments, defeated and chained, Loki had begun to hiss bitter venom like a threatened beast while Thor listened, his heart torn. 

“You, Thor _Odinson_ , you have _no idea_ what they will do to me in Asgard. So self-righteous that you would deliver me into the hands of torturers who wish nothing more than to hear me scream. Look how much our history means to you now, _brother_.” And the fear beneath the hatred in Loki’s eyes—for fear it was that drove Loki to say such things, an endless terror Thor knew his brother would never admit—that fear had been real. 

And Thor, despite the lingering sting from Loki’s knife in his side, had wavered. He had given in. “I won’t let them harm you, Loki,” he had promised. “You are my brother, now as always, and I will protect you, no matter what you’ve done.”

And he had placed the gag across his brother’s mouth then, for Loki’s own protection against whatever further vengeance he might incite with his words, for the journey home. 

*

Of course, the insanity that had gripped Loki and driven him to attack Midgard had not receded merely because they stood upon Asgardian soil. In fact it seemed to grow worse after Odin placed him in his brother’s keeping, but Thor did not let that distress him. He was determined: he had succeeded in bringing his brother home. Now all that remained was to return him to himself. So every day Thor came to the warded chamber to attempt to talk Loki out of his madness, to try to make him see sense. But Loki merely spat in his face.

“I am not who you thought I was. _I am not your brother_ , and I have never belonged here. And for what was done to me, Thor… I had every right… I will never regret a single moment of it! Not a single instant, do you understand me, Thor?” Loki snarled in animal rage, rattling the shackles that Thor had put back on him after he had succeeded in tearing everything in the room to pieces when left alone for only an hour. “Why should I? You look so surprised, but it was you who turned me into this. You, your father, your realm. None of it has ever been part of me.”

Every word hit him like a slap, until Thor had to get up to pace the little room to shake off the hurt enough to answer, to try to find a way to prove to Loki that he was wrong. Loki merely followed him with dark, intent eyes from where he sat in chains, curled over his anger, conjuring up more words with which to hurt him, since he was deprived of knives and sorcery. 

And eventually Thor understood that Loki had meant it to be this way. Loki, perverse and wounded, had wanted the chance to rail against his captor, if he must have one. He had craved to spill every resentment, every drop of bitterness until there seemed to be an ocean of blood crashing hateful between them. Loki had chosen him as jailer, had convinced him that it was the only kind choice, so that he could watch his brother’s love for him as it shattered.

But Thor would not let that happen, and he tried to remind his brother of how it once had been. How it could be again. 

Loki only snarled, answered him with insults and vile suggestions. 

It was not long before Thor found his frustration at his brother’s stubbornness growing, stirring within him until it was heavy in the air. It was not long before Thor’s attempts became more forceful.

And after each such incident he would emerge from the little room to lie in his own bed, alone, sick at what was happening, at his own powerlessness, and unable to think of facing the rest of Asgard.

In those times he heard each of Loki’s accusations again in his mind, hating how such things had come between them without him knowing, hating how Loki used them against him now, intent on driving them further apart. Hating, above all, Loki’s denial of their kinship, his repeated insistence that they were not, had never been brothers. Thor would curl there, arms around his middle, staring out at the night and feeling the distant thunder shifting and twisting in the skies like a beast in agony at that thought, at the idea that Loki did not care about all their years together, that he did not remember the same love that Thor had clung to deep inside. 

Thor began to fear that there was truly nothing he could do to change his mind. 

*

Then he came one day to find Loki sitting in his shackles, a fading bruise running from cheek to jaw and a cold expression on his face, and Thor had tried to apologize but Loki refused to look at him. And for days after, Loki said nothing, would not respond to him at all, and Thor forced himself into calm and merely sat at the other side of the little room, sometimes idly talking with his unwilling conversational partner but mostly just waiting, waiting for Loki to give up this new game. 

The first thing Loki spoke when he finally did was a demand for Thor to bring him before Odin.

“Why?” Thor asked then, surprised.

“So I can ask to be executed, rather than this,” Loki said through clenched teeth. 

Thor’s heart had ached in his chest, but he had not allowed it to change his course, because that was what Loki wanted. And if Thor ever wished to have his brother by his side again, he could not afford to let Loki win.

*

And that was how he had ended up here. 

After several days of roaming across the realm in pursuit of the fleeing prisoner, the search was ready to be called off as hopeless, and with a sigh Thor agreed to turn toward home. When they reached it, Thor took his leave of his friends with a few words, claiming weariness, and no one questioned him.

When he reached the door to his own halls, he was met by his mother, and her eyes were sorrowful but dry; she had already learned the news that no trace of Loki had been found, even to the very borders of the realm. 

“I’m sorry,” he had murmured against her soft shoulder, for he knew that her motherly heart had been torn in two by her sons’ battles, by Loki’s madness and his attempts on Thor’s life. 

She had then but nodded and let him pull away, let him make his excuses and shut the door behind himself to be alone with his own grief.

And it was good, he thought, that now at least she would need to mourn her lost child no longer, could let her hopes gently die knowing Loki had escaped to bitter freedom. She and everyone else would now believe that. It was the kindest option, and it would make everything so much easier. 

Thor delayed a few moments longer, removing his traveling cloak and boots and setting them in their places. Unfastening the buttons at his cuffs, running a hand through his hair. He could feel his heart pounding, and no will could make it slow. 

And when he could delay no more, he held his breath and stepped through the second door, the one warded by magic. The one he had left locked when he went to search, the only key safe in his pocket. 

*

The room was dark and chill and hushed. The air was full of muted echoes. An oceanic sound of breathing. A low, soft drip. The faintest clink of chains and the whisper of cloth. A musty scent in the air, unidentifiable and all the more unsettling for that. In all it gave the impression of a cavern, deep and lonely and forgotten.

The hearth-fire, which had died out days before, relit as he came to sit at the bedside, yet even in its dim and growing light Thor could see well the shape that lay motionless in the center of the mattress, within a splaying web of dark chains. The fingers, a blue-black knot of bone and tendon twisted together on the figure’s abdomen. The deep lines of blood-caked thread upon its mouth. The wet, slick smear beneath the nose. The puffy redness of the closed eyes, flaked with crusted salt-white beneath the black lashes.

Clearly Loki had been crying, perhaps for a long time. And it was an old, conditioned ache Thor felt as he realized it, one that he would never stop feeling every time he saw his brother in pain. His little brother. Before all this had happened, Thor would have let nothing hurt Loki. Not if he could stop it. 

But it had taken him far too long to understand. The being he had dragged back from Midgard—he had insisted so many times that he was not Thor’s brother. That he did not desire Thor’s protection, did not need his love. That he cared nothing at all for Thor, would have been glad if he had succeeded in killing him.

It had taken Thor too long to understand that he was right. 

This thing—this being that wore his brother’s form—

 _“You brute, you traitor, you_ liar _, you would not dare! You would not—” Loki had hissed as Thor told him of his decision, his last resort. Loki had been trembling with rage. His voice had been thin with the same false pretense of terror that he had been attempting to use to manipulate his brother all this time, but the hatred was there in his eyes, in the shadows, giving him away. And Thor could only laugh, wrecked and aching and hollow, as he reminded Loki of his many deceits and how he should be the last to complain of lies._

Thor had seen what he needed to do. And he had done it, swiftly, before his mind could change. 

Now he had only to discover whether it had been in vain. 

*

He sat at the edge of the bed, leaning over Loki. The handle of the sharp blade was cool against his palm. With his other hand he held Loki steady while his brother stared at him, whimpering as the threads were sliced away. 

He tried not to recall how it had felt days ago to force the needle through the flesh of Loki’s lips, or how Loki had squirmed and struggled and glared and bled. Thor had simply no longer been able to bear hearing that voice as it cursed and wheedled, demanded to be let go. Thor had silenced him the only way he could, and the last thing he’d heard from that ragged throat was a plea bubbled between wet lips. A plea he could not obey. But it was all right, because it was not truly his brother begging for his mercy, his promised protection. 

Now, he pulled away a few stray raveled fibers, wiped up the sticky mess of spittle and blood and thick clots, and he waited for the mad snarling to begin again.

It did not. Wide, lost eyes, their deep pupils now oddly mismatched in size, stared back at him in silence. A tongue slipped out to wet the mangled lips, and Loki’s throat moved thickly as he swallowed, and still he said nothing. 

Filling with hope, Thor slid down to remove the shackles from Loki’s ankles; Loki’s face scrunched in pain as Thor rubbed at the bruised skin encasing the bones he had broken to make absolutely certain that he could not flee, but Loki did not complain. Did not spew any of the venom Thor had come to expect. He stayed quiet as a mouse, except for the occasional soft whimper. 

Loki did begin to weep again as Thor began to gently straighten his fingers, and he felt a brief pang of guilt at how they had already begun to heal crooked, the joints fixed in the bent, bound state that had prevented him from any attempt to cast or to escape. But he knew it had been for Loki’s good. It had been necessary. 

And there was only a look of helpless confusion smeared across his face as Thor pulled him up to sitting, hands running down Loki’s hunched back. It had been so long since Thor had been able to merely touch him like this—so long since Loki had accepted comfort or tenderness from him, and Thor found himself reveling in the chance now, the beginnings of relief a flood of warmth in his belly. But he needed to know.

“Are you all right, brother? Is it you again?” Thor asked, peering at him.

Loki’s lips moved a little, forming the word _brother_ as if unsure of its meaning, and as if the lack of knowledge distressed him terribly. It was a look that Thor remembered from when Loki was a boy, when they were both so young as to be still making sense of the world, before Loki learned how to close himself off, to hide and deceive and evade. 

“Tell me it is you again,” Thor coaxed, softly. He needed to know that Loki was again the brother he missed. The one who had loved him. 

As Thor’s hand squeezed tight on his arm Loki nodded, a quick and unsteady jerk of his head, his mismatched eyes still full of confusion. And Thor began to smile. 

*

The worst moments had been those before he left to begin the diversion of a fruitless search. Thor had known that it might be some time until what he had done would take effect, but still it had worried him on a deep and seemingly instinctual level, the way Loki’s body lay so limp against the bed. He had watched over his unconscious brother for hours, nausea building inside him at the sight of the sticky white slits of Loki’s eyes beneath sallow, sunken lids, the green rolled back into his head. At the sickly slackness of the flesh of his cheek. For hours, Loki gave no sign of stirring, lying in exactly the same position in which Thor had arranged him.

Several times Thor checked, nervous and uncertain, to reassure himself that Loki still breathed, however shallowly. Yet he could not calm himself, and in the end he’d had to force himself to depart.

Had he not, he would surely have weakened, fallen to his knees by the bed and released every bond he had put on his brother’s wounded limbs. He would have frantically undone his own threadwork, gathered his brother’s body into his arms and begged him, foolishly, to waken, to look at him again and to hurl abuse at him if that was what he wished to do. If he had not stopped himself, he would have pleaded and sworn that he loved even the dark and vicious thing that Loki had become. That he did not care if Loki no longer called him brother. That all he wanted was to have Loki beside him, no matter what that meant. 

But he could not let himself do that, could not fail his own purpose at the last moment. So instead he’d gone for a while, taken to their father the tale of Loki’s escape, because he needed time, distraction. And he’d forced himself to believe that when he returned all would be well again. 

Now his faith had been repaid, with Loki’s tears drying, the snuffling fading away into the back of his throat as Loki meekly allowed Thor to finish cleaning him up after his ordeal, moving only when Thor moved him or when he gave Loki a clear gesture to follow.

Loki still made no attempt to speak, and he still looked around himself uncomprehending, his twisted hands curled and held close in his lap as if he could not imagine what he might otherwise do with them. But, Thor thought, that should not seem strange. His mouth was ravaged, and he had been asleep and then alone for some time. It should not seem so strange if he did not get his wits about him again all at once. 

And after all, none of that mattered. Loki was returned to him, and Thor lifted again his brother’s abused fingers, brushing the swollen knuckles against his lips as if to heal them, to take the hurt away.

“Don’t worry, brother,” Thor told him, filling his voice with all the comfort he could as he stroked a hand along his brother’s neck. “Nothing will harm you now, and I will care for you and keep you safe here, just as I promised. None will know, and it will be the two of us again, as it once was. I will make sure that nothing ever harms you.”

As Loki looked at him with his mismatched eyes, a weak smile lighting his face, Thor marveled at how all the viciousness was gone and replaced with something childlike. And he remembered how many times Loki had insisted he was not Thor’s brother. It had taken a long time for him to realize that it was true, even if nothing else from Loki’s mouth ever was—that the creature that renounced and spat at him was not Loki at all but instead some _thing_ , some mad figment that had taken over his mind. And longer until he remembered the mortal woman’s solution and asked himself whether it might return his brother from the madness that gripped him. 

It had been the only way. He knew so now. 

Thor drew his brother into an embrace and Loki sank against him with a sleepy sigh, allowing Thor to hold him, warm and trusting in Thor’s arms. It almost ached to feel this, what he had come to know only as a sourceless, ancient yearning for something long gone. But now he had it again. 

He had Loki again. Loki was back. His Loki, who loved him.

Thor pressed a tender kiss to the pale skin of Loki’s brow as his fingers smoothed back raven locks—gently, carefully, taking care to avoid the mottled smudge of broken veins that peeked from beneath his hairline, a dark bruise just exactly the size and shape of Mjolnir’s heavy head.


End file.
